Double trouble: My Death Valley crusade

Dad’s question: Is bliss the product of suffering? My goal in riding a bike around Death Valley in one day is to find the answer.

By Michael Collier

First in a series

When I signed up for a one-day, 200-mile bike ride around Death Valley the first Saturday in March, my cycling pals told me I was crazy.

But I am going anyway, and for a reason I would not have dreamed of when I registered for the double century in mid-November. I am on a crusade that seeks to understand the relationship between suffering and contentment.

A few days before Thanksgiving, my oldest son shattered his jaw in a freakish car crash on a Bay Area freeway. For days, our family huddled around his bed in an intensive care unit and tried to comfort him.

I was a wreck; a father tormented that he could not protect his grown son from physical catastrophe. I prayed for him.

One day, as he rested, I rode my bike up Mount Diablo, above the cloud line. Looking west, I saw a remarkable sunbeam in a straight line from the heavens to Earth.

It was meaningful spiritual pause. I snapped a photo and posted it on Facebook, with a prayer for my son.

Sunrise over Grizzly Peak, on San Francisco Bay near Point Isabel.

Shimmering paths

Over the past weeks, he has gone through a remarkable transformation, and so have we, as he has begun to accept the reality of a year-long recovery. He suffered chronic pain for weeks. But as it has faded, his sense of well-being is like that sunbeam over Mount Diablo.

This is why I am getting out of bed in the pre-dawn darkness each day and getting on the bike — to prepare for the torture I surely will have to endure four weeks from now. My weekday routine involves riding 26 miles along San Francisco Bay before work.

I think of water a lot while riding on the bay — of how it can drown us or soothe us. My son’s favorite calming image is the waves breaking over a beach. It’s a nice image.

The unseasonably warm, clear weather of late has only fueled my desire to be face-to-face with Death Valley, a place where it’s said that a person can sweat a gallon of water during a night’s sleep.

Badwater and back

My goal in riding from Furnace Creek south past Badwater to Shoshone and back — plus a loop to Stovepipe Wells and back to Furnace Creek — is this: To find the answer to the question, “Is bliss the product of suffering.”

It’s time to get back on the bike and carry on my journey.

Michael Collier, The Chronicle’s National-Foreign and Politics Editor, will post training updates in the coming weeks. He plans to post photos and a blog from Death Valley. E-mail him at mcollier@sfchronicle.com.